Sources say Google is in talks to invest in chat robot startup Character AI.

CTOnews.com, Nov. 11 (Reuters)-Google is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Character AI, a chat robot startup that is seeking money to train models and meet user needs.

The investment, which is likely to be in the form of convertible notes, will deepen Character AI's existing partnership with Google, which uses Google's cloud services and Tensor processing Unit (TPU) to train models, the source said.

Google and Character AI didn't respond to requests for comment.

In March, Character AI announced the completion of a $150 million financing, valued at $1 billion (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 7.29 billion yuan), led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Character AI, founded by former Google employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, allows users to create their own chat bots and AI assistants, available in both paid and free versions for $9.99 a month (currently about 73 yuan).

Character AI's chat bots have a variety of roles and tones to choose from, with 18-to 24-year-olds contributing about 60 per cent of site traffic.